After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation

George Steiner

apr 2013 · Open Road Media

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“A brilliant work . . . A dazzling meditation on the very nature of language itself” from the world-renowned scholar and author of The Poetry of Thought (Kirkus Reviews).

In his classic work, literary critic and scholar George Steiner tackles what he considers the Babel “problem”: Why, over the course of history, have humans developed thousands of different languages when the social, material, and economic advantages of a single tongue are obvious? Steiner argues that different cultures’ desires for privacy and exclusivity led to each developing its own language. Translation, he believes, is at the very heart of human communication, and thus at the heart of human nature. From our everyday perception of the world around us, to creativity and the uninhibited imagination, to the often inexplicable poignancy of poetry, we are constantly translating—even from our native language.

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DIVGeorge Steiner, author of dozens of books (including The Death of Tragedy, After Babel, Martin Heidegger, In Bluebeard’s Castle, My Unwritten Books, George Steiner at the New Yorker, and The Poetry of Thought), is one of the world’s foremost intellectuals. He has been professor emeritus of English and comparative literature at the University of Geneva, professor of comparative literature and fellow at the University of Oxford, and professor of poetry at Harvard University. He lives in Cambridge, England, where he has been an Extraordinary Fellow at Churchill College at the University of Cambridge since 1969. /div